{"id":766,"date":"2022-02-15T10:18:39","date_gmt":"2022-02-15T10:18:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/health-humanities\/?p=766"},"modified":"2022-03-01T02:58:09","modified_gmt":"2022-03-01T02:58:09","slug":"the-making-of-a-cheerful-ballad-health-history-and-music-workshops-in-a-reading-council-care-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/health-humanities\/the-making-of-a-cheerful-ballad-health-history-and-music-workshops-in-a-reading-council-care-home\/","title":{"rendered":"The Making of a Cheerful Ballad: Health, History, and Music Workshops in a Reading Council Care Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Amie Bolissian is the Postgraduate Representative and Social Media Manager at the Centre for Health Humanities, and is in the final year of her Wellcome Trust-funded PhD project on early modern understandings of old age, and the experiences of ageing patients and their caregivers.<\/strong>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_video link=”https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=7elkNJEUhlo”][vc_column_text]When we dreamt of holding \u2018History of Health\u2019 workshops at a local care home in Reading, we never imagined that Bob Marley and horses would feature so prominently. In fact, we were not sure if they could happen at all. Most stories that begin \u2018I had an impossible dream\u2019, tend to involve sailing around the world single-handedly, trying to get global leaders to focus on the bigger picture, or staging a West End musical from an original story. Rarely do they involve a nerdy, historical researcher wishing she could share her research on ageing health with care home residents for the annual Being Human Festival<\/a>. We were adamant that new learning was not just for the young, but during a global pandemic where age is a risk factor, and care homes have been disproportionally affected, this dream did seem a little far-fetched.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”768″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Until, that is, the Summer of 2021. The vaccine roll-out was taking effect, some restrictions were being lifted, and a series of local Reading heroes stepped into the story. Firstly, the Centre for Health Humanities<\/a> at the University of Reading (where I am based) agreed to fully supported the project, along with the Wellcome Trust<\/a> who fund my research. We wanted to create workshops for the residents that were informative, creative and fun, and we wanted to do it safely. My doctoral research on ageing health in Tudor and Stuart England has shown that people believed it was healthy for \u2018old folks\u2019 to be made cheerful with company, music and memories (as well as a regular intake of wine, apparently). When I shared our ideas with the next hero of our story, Georgia – the Reading Council Sheltered Housing Activities co-ordinator – she said that if anyone could do with a bit of music and cheer it was the residents of their extra care facility (but no wine please). All the site\u2019s activities had been cancelled during the previous 18 months, and now they were finally opening up, they were enthusiastic to try and make the workshops happen. And that is when we involved the fourth hero of our story, Rima from Wholestep Music Therapy<\/a>.[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”769″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]Rima embraced the idea immediately. She patiently listened to my enthusiasm for \u2018broadside ballads\u2019, which were printed on single sheets in vast numbers, in the 1600s, and sold cheaply throughout the country. They were among the first forms of mass entertainment. With lyrics set to a familiar folk tune, they were performed by minstrels in village squares, taverns, and fairs. The sheets were pasted to walls, and the woodcut illustrations were often used as decorative adornment in inns and houses (see picture below).<\/p>\n

Despite being called \u2018ballads\u2019, they were usually lively, catchy, and often a bit saucy. They might contain moralising tales, or satirical spins on current news events. We wanted to create our own broadside ballad in collaboration with the care home residents. They would choose a favourite tune, we would use lyrics inspired by their memories of things that made them cheerful, and illustrations drawn by them. Rima was all over it.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”771″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]And so were the Being Human Festival<\/a> conveners. They accepted our proposal, and made all their fabulous resources, experience, and promotional materials available. November rolled round.<\/p>\n

From the outset, we knew the workshops were going to be special. Georgia had gone to extraordinary lengths to make everything work, and keep everyone safe. Rima had prepared a set of songs for us all to sing, and sanitised instruments to play. We had a list of songs chosen by the residents, as well as some extra ones she was sure they would love (they did\u2026who can resist a bit of Elvis?). And above all, the final heroes of the story, the welcoming, enthusiastic, and open-minded group of residents who joined us for an afternoon of history, music, and reminiscence.[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”770″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]Over the two events, we discussed understandings of health and ageing from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. We looked at theories about the body, derived from ancient teachings, and the idea of our internal \u2018spirits\u2019 raised particular interest. The spirits were thought be thin, airy substances that sped around the body, stimulating movement and vigour, and carrying messages from the soul, heart, and mind to the rest of the body. Early modern people believed that things like sadness and old age made the spirits tired and low, which made the body unhealthy. Lifting a person\u2019s spirits with good cheer was therapeutic, and the phrase still remains in use today.<\/p>\n

The group engaged with these ideas and shared some of their own tips for healthy living. One recommended staying active, another swore by a daily vitamin, and they all raved about their roof garden which had been transformed by one of the residents in lockdown and was now a magical haven of shrubs, produce, and blooms. When we started to sing together, we shared memories inspired by the songs. One resident described how, as a boy, he had ridden bareback on his Grandad\u2019s horses in South Reading, and considered them and his grandfather his best friends. This inspired a beautiful illustration of a horse for our ballad sheet by another attendee. We discovered that two of the group had seen Bob Marley perform live in the seventies, which prompted a raucous singalong to \u2018Three Little Birds\u2019. Many other memories appear below, in the lyrics to the final ballad composed by Rima. The song that got everyone singing the loudest was the classic \u2018You Are My Sunshine\u2019, and we chose this as the tune for our ballad.[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”787″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_single_image image=”788″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]Not all the memories we explored were cheerful. Many spoke of the loneliness of lockdowns, and how much they had missed social events such as this. We asked how they had coped, and they said they just had, because \u2026well, you have to, don\u2019t you? When they got up to leave the final session, I overheard someone saying quietly \u2018Well, I really enjoyed that. I really enjoyed that.\u2019 And we all did. We shared new things with new people, music and laughter, and collective creativity, something that had been made difficult to do in-person for a long while. In this way, the workshops contained many elements of healthy \u2018cheerfulness\u2019 from seventeenth-century medical manuals. Cheerfulness was recommended because it was a healthy, gentle \u2018passion\u2019. It was not like the \u2018lightning\u2019 flash of \u2018mirth\u2019, but instead kept up \u2018a kind of Day-light in the Mind\u2019, filling it \u2018with a steady and perpetual serenity\u2019.1<\/sup> After both the stress and the tedium of the COVID restrictions, a little steady and perpetual serenity, sunshine, memories of horses, and Bob Marley singing \u2018every little thing was gonna be alright\u2019 turned out to be not just a possible dream, but a very welcome one.<\/p>\n

Thanks again to the Centre for Health Humanities, University of Reading, Being Human Festival, and the Wellcome Trust.[\/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/4″][vc_single_image image=”774″ img_size=”full”][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/4″][vc_single_image image=”773″ img_size=”full”][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/4″][vc_single_image image=”772″ img_size=”100×100″][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/4″][vc_single_image image=”783″ img_size=”full”][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Addison, Joseph, Maxims, observations, and reflections, moral, political, and divine<\/em> (London, 1720), 93.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

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